Beverly controls the market: Fort Smith-based firm paces state, as well as U.S., in nursing homes.

AS A QUALITY ASSURANCE executive with Beverly Enterprises Inc., Ellen Robertson knows how to determine an excellent nursing home.

Beverly Enterprises, based in Fort Smith, is the largest operator of nursing homes in the country. It also owns two of the three largest facilities in Arkansas, according to Arkansas Business' annual ranking.

"When I go into any of our facilities to evaluate them, I first look at the residents," says Robertson, quality assurance corporate director of social work and therapeutic recreational services. "I make sure their clothes are clean, appropriately fitting and neat. In the daytime, they should be dressed in regular street clothes and not in pajamas or hospital gowns.

"I make sure there is no food on their faces or their clothing, that their hair is groomed appropriately."

Robertson says she also checks the interaction between the staff and residents. Staff members should acknowledge residents and speak warmly when they pass instead of ignoring them.

She also expects the nursing center to be as homelike as possible, with the residents allowed to decorate their bedroom like their rooms at home. She notices also the "sights and sounds" or the environment that allows residents to pursue recreation and social interaction as much as they desire.

Beverly owns and operates Jacksonville Nursing Center and Leisure Lodge in Searcy, each with 245 beds. Pine Bluff Nursing Home also has 245 beds. These three lead the list for the third straight year.

Of the 52 nursing homes on the list, Leisure Lodge of Searcy was the most profitable. Its net income last year was $737,286.

Stella Manor Nursing Center in Russellville, with 144 beds, had the highest earnings per bed, $4,226. Oak Manor Nursing Center in Booneville, which just missed making the list with 115 beds, earned $4,781 per bed in 1992.

Beverly operates 38 nursing homes with 4,495 beds in Arkansas. Nationally, the firm has 830 nursing homes and 89,298 beds, more than twice the nation's No. 2 company, Hillhaven Corp. of Tacoma, Wash.

Focus on Quality

"Our No. 1 focus is the quality we deliver to the residents and to our |employees~, too," says Neil Gulsbig, Beverly's vice president of communications. "If you take care of the quality, everything else comes."

Gulsbig says Beverly spends more money in those two areas than any other long-term care company in the country.

Beverly independently reviews each facility twice a year, Gulsbig says. Gulsbig says 96.5 percent of Beverly Enterprises' facilities are in compliance with federal and state guidelines, better than the national average of 94 percent.

Beverly is concentrating on increasing its turnover rate at its nursing homes through therapy that allows the residents to return to their homes. At some of its nationwide facilities, Beverly has a turnover rate as high as 50 percent within two months, Gulsbig says.

"Instead of nursing facilities being looked at as they had previously, as places where people go to die, they are being looked at as facilities where people go to progress after a disease or some impairment," Robertson says. "Many of our facilities in Arkansas are employing physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, mental health therapists and social workers."

She says if residents are rehabilitated physically and emotionally soon after an injury or stroke, they often can improve enough to return home.

Federal guidelines established in October 1990 require all nursing homes to rehabilitate residents to "their highest practicable level of functioning," Robertson says.

As much as 90 percent of nursing home fees is paid through Medicaid or Medicare, Robertson says. But private funding for nursing homes in Arkansas can average $1,500-$4,000 a month.

Robertson notes that only 5 percent of the elderly population resides in nursing homes.

Because of Beverly Enterprises' focus on rehabilitative care, Gulsbig says, the company is well-positioned to adapt to any changes in health care that might be mandated through the Clinton administration.